What do Mac & Cheese and Power of Attorneys Have in Common?

At USAGov, we know that email is often our #1 driver of traffic to our content, and nine out of 10 times it’s our go-to outreach tool for disseminating timely information. But doing email sends consistently and effectively isn’t always clear cut, especially when you have a combined 1.3 million subscribers.

We send email blasts to our subscriber lists about all sorts of content based on what they signed up to get. Topics range from immigration to travel, health, and jobs.

What email has done for us:

Informed the public about a campaign and increased public participation in social media chats.

Experimentation and Measurement

We evaluate every message we send by reviewing our data about a week after an email’s sent. Unique open rates and click rates—both numbers and percentages—help us evaluate what content performed well. We know, for example, that we have a lot of visitors to USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov seeking information on immigration. We align that information with our email sends, and the open rates and click-through rates prove the value of knowing what people are interested in.

At the end of every month, our internal performance measurement team provides us with a detailed report of how our messages performed. This is valuable information that informs and influences our email content strategy. We combine the data from email behavior with data from website visits and calls to our contact center, 1-844-USA-GOV1. All of these factors determine what we invest time writing about.

Many factors go into a successful email, from subject line, to preheader text, to bypassing spam filtering systems. After you checked all these off, you also need to consider images.

We’ve noted that eight out of 10 times emails with images outperform emails that don’t include images. An image should always support your content and should include alternative text for screen readers.

Things to Consider

There are numerous things to take into consideration as you explore email sends and campaigns. Here are some key questions to explore for your strategy: